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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Book Review: Born a Crime

Title: Born
a Crime

Author: Trevor
Noah

Enjoyment
Rating: 5/5

Source:
Audiobook from Audible

This book is not just another celebrity memoir. I
did not know what to expect when I bought Trevor Noah's book. I knew he was
from South Africa, that he is the current host of The Daily Show, and that I
had enjoyed many clips from his show during the election, but that's about it. The book
is billed as a "coming of age story during the twilight of apartheid in
South Africa," and since in 2016 I read Nelson Mandela's autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom, my interest was
piqued. Trevor's story is far more complicated and eye-opening than I ever would
have imagined. Through Trevor's humor
in the face of incredible hardship and his masterful storytelling, I will never
think about apartheid, race, or crime the same way again.

Trevor
was born to an unmarried black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father in a time
when the laws of apartheid made sexual relations between the races a crime
punishable by up to five years in prison. Simply being a mixed race, or
"colored" boy (a separate legal and cultural classification than white or black), he was evidence of his mother's crime. When he was a young boy
staying at his grandmother's house, his cousins would go out to play all day,
while he was forced to stay inside or risk being taken by the police. Even as
apartheid fell and the laws began to change, Trevor struggled to navigate the codes
of race in a country with eleven official languages and many social and political efforts to separate groups and
prevent unity. English is his first language, but he speaks several other South
African languages and found that shared language defines who you are to people
more than color or any other characteristic. Talking the same language says
"we are the same."

Trevor's
mother is a fascinating woman who flouted social norms of race and gender,
and yet still had to live in a country where her son was born a crime and where
the police did not even pretend to care about wife battery and issues of
domestic violence. Even when she was shot through the head by her ex-husband,
the criminal justice system failed to give her attempted murderer even a slap
on the wrist.

I
wish I could retell here all of the stories in this book, but instead, I will
just say, go read it. And if you have any recommendations of books written by
women about apartheid, please share. All
I have read and watched so far about apartheid has been largely through a male
perspective.